SF Homelessness: A Three-Decade-Long "Emergency"

Yes, it's another meeting on homelessness,
but this time it will be different.

Watching a 1994 episode of Murder She Wrote set in San Francisco, I was struck by the inclusion of a homeless character who played a major role in the solution of a murder. Even back then it was widely known that San Francisco had a homelessness problem.

Three decades and billions of dollars later, fed-up residents want San Francisco to declare a state of emergency:

Frustrated by the crisis of persistent homelessness in San Francisco, a group of residents wants the city to declare a state of emergency to enable a more urgent response to the problem.

The move would be similar to action taken by newly elected Mayor Karen Bass in Los Angeles, who declared a homelessness emergency on her first day in office in December to fast-track moving thousands of people off the streets. It would also mirror Mayor London Breed’s emergency declaration over COVID-19, which cut through red tape and helped major policy changes happen quickly. At last count, nearly 4,400 people were counted living on San Francisco streets in one night.

The residents were mad and motivated, but there were no new ideas that came out of the discussions. Converting existing vacant buildings, prioritizing women and children, and cutting red tape have all been heard before.

Rechristening the problem an emergency might well get a few hundred more people off the streets in relatively little time, but the improvement will be short-term. The most probable outcome is that San Francisco will have spent even more dollars and homelessness will remain as intractable as ever.